Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux

tetrix: Only satisfactory, by comparison

At this point in time, the danger in trying out a new Tetris clone, is that the field is already filled with contenders, and some of them are very good.

To be fair though, and afford equal time to all the applicants, here’s Tetrix:

Tetrix has a nice arrangement, a good selection of default keys, decent use of color, keeps high scores and plenty of on-screen help. It’s light, compiles in seconds, and won’t tie up your system.

From that list, you’d think Tetrix would qualify for a star. But it doesn’t really, because of a few things.

For one, a couple of commands that are shown in the help box don’t seem to work. The “beep” and the “pause” keys both seem to have no effect. And in the case of the pause key, that’s a big problem.

And second, I have a real hard time measuring where a block will fall. Part of that is my fault, since I run the font in my terminal emulator one-pixel tight. But even in a virtual console, the height of the drop and the position of the block are hard to gauge.

The biggest reason I can’t give a superior mark to Tetrix though, is because there are already some really great Tetris clones out there, that make Tetrix look stale. vitetris, as I’ve mentioned countless times, is simply the gold standard for Tetris clones, and if you read that page, you’ll see why.

And yetris, which is the effort of a relative newcomer, has enough visual flair to satisfy even the most curmudgeonly GUI fan. It does not quite have all the bells and whistles of vitetris, but it’s making a run at the title.

So it’s not that Tetrix is a bad game — it does do almost everything right, and were it not for the two small shortcomings I mentioned, it might get a more enthusiastic thumbs-up. But the competition is way ahead of Tetrix, with makes it look only satisfactory, by comparison.